Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Jon Duckett for Axiata Investor Relations, and I'd like to thank you for joining this call on Axiata's first half 2025 performance and financial results. Some housekeeping for the call: we'd appreciate it if everyone could keep their microphones on mute during the call for us. Presenting today will be Vivek Sood, our Group CEO, and also Nik Kamil, our Group CFO. Without further delay, I will hand over to Vivek for the presentation.
Okay, thank you, Jon. A very good afternoon to all of you. Thanks for joining the quarter two investors' analyst call. Let me do one slide with a bit of details around where we are with the strategy which we have put in place, then I'll hand over to Nik to go through the detailed financials for the quarter two . I think we've headline numbers as a profit of RM 431 million for the first half, and we are happy to declare dividend offerings.
The intent for the second half is to drive sales. I think the focus around delivering or executing on our five strategies, which was the five strategic pillars or vectors of value creation, is falling in place. We've had a very strong operational performance from our telcos, specifically ones in the franchise market, in this particular quarter.
I think good news that all of them are generating cash, and they've been able to upstream a fairly strong dividend of LKR 1 billion in the first half of this year. If I go one by one and then go through a little bit of detail, I mean, you are aware of our completion of the merger with XL-Smartfren, which happened in April, and we also exited out of Myanmar. Both of them are part of our strategy of portfolio optimization. the XL-Smartfren, as you know, has been progressing well on its integration path.
Myanmar, as you know, the difficult market conditions, as well as the operating environment, we decided to exit out of towers in Myanmar. This also, in a way, creates a much stronger capability to value illuminate the tower business of Axiata.
If I go to the next slide, I think frontier markets, I would say, positive signs of market repair with improvement in ARPU. There's also efforts of market consolidation, specifically in Sri Lanka, where Dialog-Airtel merger also is gaining traction, and that's resulting in a fairly strong improvement in the performance, overall performance of the company. Let me just quickly touch upon each of those operating companies' frontier markets. As you know, these are basically three telcos of ours: Bangladesh, Indonesia. I think macro challenges are still improving there.
Overall, you're seeing some indications of economic recovery. I mean, the remittances are at some speed. The growth in exports continues to be fairly strong, and we are seeing government getting ready for elections sometime in the first quarter of next year. One of the efforts in Indonesia was to make the balance sheet more resilient.
W e're pretty much, by the end of this year, would have paid down all of our U.S. debt. Our balance sheet is fairly strong now at around 0.9x net debt to EBITDA. You've seen ARPU stabilizing on a year-to-date basis, but we've seen a fair amount of strong growth coming in on a quarter-on-quarter basis. I think we have our ARPU moved up by around 12% in the last quarter, which translated into a strong 9% growth coming in.
And then also we've seen a strong profitability improvement over the last year, with 55% growth on a year-on-year basis and something like 79% improvement in profitability on a quarter-on-quarter basis. And a lot of it is coming through the slowdown from revenue, as well as focus around cost management. Dialog actually has been a very, very strong story. The macro situation is improving there, where inflation is fairly low.
We are seeing improvement in consumption, and the currency remains fairly stable against the U.S. dollar. All that has resulted in a fairly strong balance sheet for us. We've seen debt exposure coming down. We are expecting by next year, we should be out of the US dollar debt, and the balance sheet is fairly strong at 0.96 net debt to EBITDA. Growth in the mobile segment has been tremendous. We've seen organic improvement of nearly 33%, and overall, 18% came just organic, and 15% benefited from the consolidation with Airtel.
Subscriber growth, 17% year-on-year, and ARPU improvement of nearly 18% year-on-year has translated into a very strong profit, where Dialog profit has jumped by greater than 100%, which basically is an outcome of not only integration efficiencies, but also the fact that the market is becoming far more rational.
And we're seeing that impact in the overall ARPU improvement, as well as translating into profit growth. Smart continues to remain strong with cash of around 186 billion. Last quarter, delivered profit around $36 million, and we've seen ARPU improvement around 12.12% over the last one year, and that translated into a profit growth of 6%. Partly impacted the year, the quarter was partly impacted, as you know, because of the tension between Thailand and Cambodia, as well as some renegotiation on the A2P SMS business, which did impact the top-line growth. So synergies from network modernization and integration, I think, are progressing well. yesterday, XLSMART did announce their results for quarter two , where focus is on synergies of $100 million-$200 million for this year.
And what I'm told is around more than 55%-56% of the synergies have already been captured, and we should start seeing the full benefits of synergies coming sometime around 2027. There's also been an aggressive modernization plan, which is put in place by XLSMART. I think we've been able to take an aggressive position on CapEx investment to modernize because of certain deferred considerations agreed with the vendors. We are also seeing CDB now getting into a growth track with continuing the delivery of net synergies of RM 1.7 billion today. Home business for CelcomDigi is being continued.
We should start with full benefits. What we communicated earlier, RM 700 million-RM 800 million Ringgit steady-state savings in CDB is somewhat on track. We should also see XLSMART delivering RM 300 million-RM 400 million by 2027. So far, there's nothing concerning, no concern for me to highlight here.
Link Net, I think the business has been obviously impacted because last year, if you recall, we did move the residential retail business to XLSMART, making Link Net as a wholesale fiber company. And as a result of that, we would see the top line actually lower because a lot of revenues to the ServCo business is now captured on the XL side. But if I take that out, Link Net has grown by around 47% on a year-to-date basis.
We've had some concern on the rollout coming requirements from XL's because they are at the moment going through the merger, at least to focus on mobile consolidation. So they've been kind of a little bit behind on the home business. However, Link Net is managing to secure ISP outside their new ISPs, transitioning itself to a wholesale fiber company.
If I remember, last month, they actually delivered something like 100,000, around 400,000 new home passes being built for external ISPs. EDOTCO has a fairly strong order book on USP as well as colocation. Their balance sheet is improving, part of it coming out of the proceeds from EDOTCO Myanmar, which has been used for reducing the debt. The profitability of close to RM 233 million for the year-to-date has been a strong performance. However, revenues got impacted because of translation from operating currencies into Ringgit for EDOTCO.
There, colocation remains fairly strong. Boost, building the loan book on the Boost plan, I think we are at around RM 167 million loan book by June. It's moving in the right direction, but slower than what we had anticipated because of various factors, including regulatory tech stability, etc.
We are also seeing the non-bank losses to come down, at least at the EBITDA level, on a run rate basis by the end of 2025. So that's what has been focused on. ADA, slightly weaker on revenue, mainly because low margin, the programmatic marketing business has been slowed down, and the priority has been more around customer engagement and solutions business, which is a higher margin business. So you see lower revenue. However, the EBITDA and EBIT continues to do well at 25% and 47% improvement. And ADA continues to remain a fairly strong profitable business. Go to the next slide. I think balance sheet, I'll leave more for Nik to cover on how the balance sheet is going to be.
But as I said earlier, I think the continuing efforts of the OpCos to deliver strong cash flows and upstreaming that to Axiata helped us to deliver dividend commitment to the shareholders. Okay, with that, I'll hand over to Nik and quickly take you through the financial numbers.
Thank you, Vivek. Assalamualaikum and good afternoon, everyone. I'll take us through the first half 2025 financial performance. Starting with revenue, first half of this year, we recorded a revenue of RM 5.86 billion on a year-to-date basis. This implies a 10% decline, which was mainly due to Forex translation. Looking at it from a constant currency basis, it's relatively flat, slightly below at 0.9%. Quarter-on-quarter increase highlights the positive performance at the OpCos, where on a constant currency basis, revenue grew by 5.7%.
EBITDA for the first six months of the year was at RM 2.66 billion, year-on-year, 8.5% down, again, mainly driven by Forex translation. However, cost discipline across all our OpCos resulted in an improved EBITDA growth on the constant currency basis, whereby on a year-on-year, it grew by about 2.3% and quarter-on-quarter by 21.9%. Reported EBIT was at RM 700 million. This is on a continuing basis. On an underlying constant currency basis, EBIT grew by 16% to RM 1 billion. JCE is our joint control entities. So share of results for the first half of the year was RM 171 million, which is a decline year-on-year of 17.4%. CDB performance was stable.
However, the slightly lower number compared to last year was mainly due to XLSMART's share of results or share of loss for the second quarter of RM 85 million, of which approximately RM 56 million related to accelerated depreciation that was taken at the merged entity post the merger. Just to elaborate on the contribution from CelcomDigi for the first half of this year was RM 255 million. Actually, it was higher compared to the same period last year of RM 207 million.
PATAMI reported was RM 431 million, more than 100% growth year-on-year and 69.4% higher quarter-on-quarter. Main reason for this is included in PATAMI will be the gain on disposal of XL of RM 505 million, loss on disposal of EDOTCO Myanmar, whereby the Axiata share was RM 187 million. The net gain as such is RM 318 million.
Also included in PATAMI was the results of XL for the first three months of the year or quarter one, plus half of the month of April, and also the results of EDOTCO Myanmar for the first five months until end of May when it was disposed of by EDOTCO. On the UPATAMI line, UPATAMI grew 39% year-on-year and more than 100% quarter-on-quarter. This is mainly due to the normalization of the XLSMART depreciation of assets and also Link Net goodwill impairment. One thing which I should mention, the EBIT of RM 700 million on a reported basis and continuing basis.
This is the reason why it's come down a fair bit from the EBITDA line is because we also took impairment on Link Net goodwill. I will now take you through our frontier and also infra OpCos, which accounts for 95% of our revenue.
This slide, we're talking on Robi, building on what Vivek had alluded to earlier. Quarter-on-quarter, we saw a 9.1% growth in local currency driven by growth in voice and data and supported by increase in subs and also ARPU, which in quarter two , they benefited from having two Eid festivals, which is the Hari Raya Aidilfitri and Hari Raya Haji, fell in the same quarter.
Blended ARPU grew by about 8.6%. EBITDA and EBIT also improved based on the revenue growth and also a reversal of provision relating to Bangla Phone, which improved the EBITDA and flow through to EBIT. On cash flow, a slight decline quarter-on-quarter due to higher CapEx and taxation due to the higher profit before tax, which offset the increase in EBITDA.
However, on a year-on-year basis, it grew mainly due to CapEx spend, which was much lower in the first half of this year, roughly about BDT 3 billion compared to BDT 10.4 billion in the same period last year. PATAMI level, quarter-on-quarter improvements was flow through from the higher EBIT, offset with higher net funding costs from additional borrowings for spectrum renewal, and also the taxation due to the higher PBT.
Next, on Dialog, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, revenue grew by 1.9% driven by mobile and by mobile, where I think Vivek alluded earlier, the mobile segment actually grew on a year-to-date basis by 33%. ARPU was also higher quarter two 2025 at 452 compared to last quarter of 422. Quarter-on-quarter, EBITDA grew by about 6.4% and EBIT also by 6.4% due to the high from the higher revenue flow through and lower interconnect costs in the second quarter.
On cash flow, AOFCF quarter-on-quarter was down 14% due to the higher CapEx spend, which offset the higher EBITDA and lower net funding costs, tax expense, and ROU depreciation. PATAMI level, quarter-on-quarter grew 22.6%, flowing through from the higher EBIT, lower finance costs, and tax expense, despite lower Forex gains. Next, on Smart, quarter-on-quarter, Smart, I would say, relatively stable performance. Quarter-on-quarter, it grew 2%, driven by prepaid revenue, while enterprise business also grew 4.9%.
There was an uplift in April-May, which is offset by the impact of the termination of internet link from Thailand. This is due to the conflict between Thailand and Cambodia that happened in the second half of June, basically roughly from 16th to 30th of June. Blended ARPU, though, on a quarter-by-quarter basis also improved. At the EBITDA and EBIT line, EBITDA grew quarter-on-quarter 12.9%, EBIT 28.3%.
The performance was due to the flow through from revenue and reversal revenue sharing of $4.3 million. EBIT further improved due to lower depreciation and amortization due to a one-off accelerated depreciation and ARO adjustment in quarter one of this year. At the cash flow level, 10.6% higher quarter-on-quarter due to the higher EBITDA, offset by higher tax and ROU depreciation, where CapEx was flat quarter-on-quarter. PATAMI improved 19.4% quarter-on-quarter from the flow through of higher EBIT, offset with tax from higher PBT. Link Net.
Next, so FibreCo is driving the build to suit and securing new ISPs. However, on a quarter-on-quarter, you can see a decline at revenue line of 5.4% due to the decline in FibreCo and media due to the impacted churn of subs, where churn has increased marginally from 3% in March to about 3.6% in June.
Home passes improved by about 200,000 homes from quarter one. As at quarter two, it was 4.4 million home passes. EBITDA was a little bit higher quarter-on-quarter by 21.4%, and EBIT showed a contraction of losses by about 10.6%. The improvement was from at EBITDA was from lower ECL provision and lower direct costs, and that flowed to EBIT. On cash flow, slightly smaller negative cash flow, so improvement about 30.7%. Again, improvement is back on the higher EBITDA and lower CapEx and funding costs. At PATAMI, the losses narrowed slightly by about 5.1% to RM 337 million. Lower PATAMI reflects the lower EBIT and lower finance costs from lower debt and interest rates, partially offset by deferred tax liabilities.
Finally, on EDOTCO, whereby on a quarter-by-quarter basis, revenue grew by about 5.3%, sorry, mainly from new USP project revenue in Malaysia and higher revenue offsetting the lower revenue in Bangladesh. On a year-to-date basis, at constant currency, it was at RM 1.26 billion, still lower compared to year-to-date 2024. However, here, just as a way of recap, included in the year-to-date 2024, a revenue of RM 1.34 billion was a one-off price benchmarking adjustment of approximately RM 121 million. If we were to normalize for that, then revenue growth would have been relatively flattish. EBITDA, though, was higher by about 16.2% quarter-on-quarter and EBIT 31% quarter-on-quarter, mainly due to the stronger revenue and also reversal of some tax items in Bangladesh, along with some ECL reversal as well.
On a year-to-date basis, on a constant currency, EBITDA was RM 959, which is 1.8% higher year-on-year, and EBIT was also at RM 567, which is 33%, so even higher than the 22.8% that is on a reported basis. Here, again, the main impact is due to the strengthening of the Ringgit against other operating currencies in the quarter. In particular, the biggest will have to be Bangladesh. From a cash flow perspective, quarter-on-quarter, AOFCF improved 50.8% to RM 123 million. This is on the back of higher EBITDA and lower CapEx due to delays in rollout in the growth markets.
At the PATAMI level, it grew by more than 100% to RM 160 million quarter-on-quarter, which is driven by the EBIT growth and also FX gain. Next, I will move to the balance sheet as at 30th of June 2025, starting with group cash of RM 4.9 billion.
This is on the back of strong cash generation from OpCos, resulting in what Vivek mentioned, the upstreaming of about 1 billion in dividends for the first half of the year, but also the proceeds that we received from the merger that was done in Indonesia between XL Axiata and Smartfren after the repayment of the multicurrency term loan of approximately $250 million, roughly about RM 1.1 billion, which also you can see showed the reduction in OpCos borrowings to RM 7.9 billion. At the group level, borrowings at the end of June were RM 17.7 billion. This was a 31.4% reduction year-on-year, and quarter-on-quarter, it was also 22.5% lower. Group borrowings at the end of quarter one was roughly about RM 22.8 billion.
The 5.1 billion reduction to 17.7 billion was largely due to the deconsolidation of XL, which essentially removed debts of approximately 3.5 billion. I had alluded to earlier as well. There was over 1 billion reduction in HoldCo debt due to the repayment of the MCTL term loan facility. Cash flow generation, AOFCF for the first half of the year was RM 869 million. Yes, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, it increased by over 100%. Primarily, this is mainly due to the strict CapEx management across all our OpCos and the operational excellence and cost focus that all our OpCos have put in.
HoldCo cash at RM 1.4 billion is higher quarter-on-quarter and also year-on-year, mainly due to the net cash that we received from the proceeds from the Indonesia merger after subtracting the debt repayment at HoldCo. I've already gone through HoldCo borrowings.
Finally, on net debt to EBITDA, at the end of Q2, we were at 2.7 x, which is lower than Q1 25, which is at 3x . This benefited from the reduction in debts, mainly due to the repayment of the MCTL facility at HoldCo level. With that, I will pass it back to Vivek to take us through the headline KPIs for 2025.
Yeah. Yeah. So I think headline KPI, which we gave earlier this year, was high single-digit growth in EBIT. That's why we're still sticking to that. We are looking at the similar numbers, so we're fairly confident that we should be able to meet our headline KPI. Opportunities, we are seeing some early signs of market repair. Indonesia is not so reflective in quarter two, but quarter three, we've seen some positive signs on the startup path as well as the pricing on the charges and CLM.
I think we're seeing some green shoots there. Hopefully, the Malaysian market will see a market repair. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, actually, as you've seen, reflective of ARPU development in these two markets, we are seeing good early signs of sanity coming in these two markets. Specifically, Sri Lanka was in consolidation between Airtel and Dialog. Merger synergies, I think it's not visible at this point in time. I think the real benefit would be once we finish all the integration across the two companies. Dialog, we should start seeing full synergy benefits getting realized because they're pretty much done with the integration of the two companies. Monetization of infra assets, I think we are looking at, as you know, part of the strategy was to look at value illumination, monetization, etc.
I think as we go along, we wouldn't make necessary announcements, but directionally, we would look at this as an opportunity for us to use that to pay down some of the further holding company debt risks. I think 5G wholesale network discussions are still developing. I think we're coming closer to the timelines where the Ministry of Finance has to exercise its put option. So we're hopeful that there would be some good outcome we can achieve based on the discussion we are having or CelcomDigi has been having with the regulators.
Landscape in Indonesia, we see sanity in the market, but if you look back, the Indonesian market, there's always risk of one of the operators getting aggressive in the market for the sake of market share, and that further starts destroying the market.
We expect market sanity to continue, but there's always this risk which exists in that market. Macro challenges, I think global U.S. tariff, we don't see big issue for our markets because all of them have pretty much a similar 19%-20% tariff being introduced. It does not necessarily impact the consumption of mobile services. As you know, in other markets, our ARPU for capital income is extremely low. However, the macro and political development inside the countries would have its impact on the overall GDP growth, which does have an impact on the lower end of the pyramid ability to or affordability. So those are potential risks, but we don't see any immediate development of this.
Execution of the monetization strategy, I think, is why we say risk, while the efforts may be there to monetize, but the question is markets are not very conducive for investors or investors' appetite, specifically given the overall uncertainty in the overall global macro environment. With that, we will stop talking and get to answer your questions.
Thanks, Vivek. We'll now open up the floor to questions. Please utilize the raise your hand button on the screen, and we'll take your questions. So, I have Foong here . Foong has a question. Go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Yes.
Yeah, I can hear you.
Ok.ay. Hi, Vivek and Nik. Thanks for the presentation. Three questions from me. Firstly, regarding the monetization of your infrastructure assets, right? Can you give us an update on the progress there for both EDOTCO and Link Net? Where are we in the process now?
And also your expected timeline for completion? That's question number one. Secondly, for EDOTCO, what is the normalized EBITDA for the first half, excluding the one-offs that you mentioned earlier, and also on an actual currency basis? And related to EDOTCO, I wanted to know what caused the drop in tenancies and towers in Malaysia on a Qo Q basis? And then my third question related to Boost's, the non-bank losses widen Qo Q. Why was that the case? And are we still expecting breakeven at the net level by year-end? Yep. Those are my three questions. Thank you.
Yeah, I think the first one, I mean, we are in the process of preparing our plans for monetization. Unfortunately, I would not be in a situation to make any dates or any specific disclosure on this at this point in time. As in when we are ready to make those announcements, we will come back to the investors. On EDOTCO, maybe?
Yeah. So on EDOTCO, I believe your first question is in terms of what will the number be if you're normalizing? This is actually more on the year-to-date 2024, where we had the one-off price benchmarking exercise. The one-off benefit, if you like, in year-to-date 2024 was RM 121 million. So taking that one out, you'll come to a year-to-date 2024 revenue of about RM 1.22 billion compared to year-to-date 2025 of RM 1.2 billion. However, if you were to look at year-to-date 2025 at the constant currency basis so that you're comparing it like for like and taking out the forex impact, year-to-date 2025 will be RM 1.255 million, so slightly ahead of a normalized year-to-date 2024. So that was the first question on the revenue.
Secondly, I believe your question was around why was there a reduction in towers and tenancies for Malaysia. This was mainly coming out of the merger between Celcom and Digi and post the negotiations between EDOTCO and CelcomDigi, whereby certain towers were decommissioned, certain towers were swapped out, but there are also orders or basically plans for future towers in the future, right? But this is mainly will be from the decommissioning of some of those sites.
Just maybe on Boost, I can answer. The Boost losses on the non-bank side is while the EBITDA has improved over last year, there is a monetization of some of these intangibles over the during the quarter, which has resulted into higher losses.
I think we're still targeting to move towards run rate breakeven on EBITDA basis by the end of this year because there are some of these monetization which we'll have, which will keep coming. So at a profit level, not, but at the EBITDA level on a non-bank, we should be breaking even by the end of this year on a run rate basis.
Okay. And if I can just follow up with two questions, right? Firstly, just coming back to Vivek, right? Just now during the segment on opportunities and risks, you mentioned on the risk side, markets may not be very conducive. There's still uncertainty in the global environment, and that may have some influence, right, on your plans for asset monetization.
I'm wondering whether you are just mentioning that as academic mentioning of it, or are you sort of seeing any real indications of that having an impact on what you're trying to do? That's first question. And then secondly, on the EDOTCO, so Nik just wanted to confirm, RM 885 million EBITDA in the first half of 2025 is a normalized number on actual currency basis. The ECL reversal was in the first half of 2024, is it?
I didn't say ECL reversal. The first half of 2024 was a price benchmarking, so it impacted the revenue numbers. So the RM 885 million EBITDA for year-to-date 2025, what was your question around the RM 885 million for the year-to-date?
On actual EBITDA or?
This is actual reported EBITDA.
Actual reported. So it's not normalized.
It's not normalized.
It's on actual currency.
Yeah. Would you have the normalized EBITDA on actual currency?
On actual currency. Yeah. Give me one second. I'll come back to you on that one.
Yeah. Okay.
Your first question sounds a little bit academic, but also we would see given our portfolio is multiple countries, and they may be given the global macro situation, there may be concerns on some of those portfolios at this point in time. So while we've not gone out, but that's the feeler we get on an informal discussion there.
Okay. Got it. Got it, Vivek. So Nik, you want to come back on that EBITDA number?
Yeah. I'm just getting my team to pick it up, get it out for me, and I'll mention it.
Yeah. Okay. Sure.
Thanks.
Okay. We've got some questions from Louis. Do you want to ask your questions? Louis?
Hi. Yeah. I just unmuted now. Hey, thanks for hosting the call. I had three questions, please. First, just wanted to get a sense for what major items accounted for the difference between reported PATAMI and UPATAMI. I didn't quite catch it. Might be useful for future if it's in the deck so you don't have to keep pulling it out. Second question is regarding EDOTCO. Qo Q is what I'm looking at. EBITDA up about RM 70 million, where revenues were up only RM 31 million. Is this due to cash cost savings during the quarter?
And therefore, the 77% EBITDA margin is a new baseline we should look at for EDOTCO. Last question is just a housekeeping one. The restatements you've seen for first quarter this year and first half last year, these are primarily to deconsolidate XLSMART up to the start of the year and not from the point of merger. Thank you.
Yeah. Go ahead. You want to cover the first one?
Yeah. And I think that question is right on the EDOTCO. Yeah. Sure. Right on EDOTCO, yeah. So maybe I can get the good question. So if you there's two major items coming from EBITDA. One is essentially the price benchmarking from the revenue perspective if you slow down to EBITDA 100%, right? Because that's based on a settlement with the CDB last year. And secondly, I think, and that's a slowdown of 121. And essentially, I think if you look at the currency from a translation losses, that is around a 40 million impact on EBITDA.
So these two impact on itself, if you were to take and compare against year-to-date 2025, our growth rate would be around 11% for EBITDA. If you take into account of all the reversals and all that, our normalized EBITDA margin will be around 72.5%. Yeah. That's to answer Foong's question as well earlier on.
Thanks. Just to clarify, the forex is essentially in EBITDA as well. So it's not below the EBITDA line.
So this is a translation losses from our NDCs, predominantly Bangladesh and Philippines. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. Thanks.
Yeah. So with regards to exclusions on the continuing UPATAMI, firstly, we have forex-related, which is forex related gains and hedging costs. This is RM 111 million net. There was PPA amortization, mainly for Link Net and also CelcomDigi of RM 24.8 million. XLSMART also had XL depreciation of RM 57 million. And there was a Link Net goodwill impairment at the group level of RM 230 million level.
Okay. Great. Thanks, Nik.
Sure.
And on the housekeeping question, yeah?
Do you mind repeating the housekeeping question again? I didn't quite catch it.
Yeah. So the restatements essentially that we're seeing year on year and even Q o Q is because XL is now deconsolidated up to the start of up to Jan, or is it not up to when the merger took place in May, April rather? Is that correct or?
Yes. So the restatement is to essentially, yeah, on the XL Axiata deconsolidation.
And it's only to the start of the year.
It is. That's right.
Okay. Great. Thanks. Very clear. Yes.
Thanks, Louis. We've got some questions from Isaac. Isaac, we'll just unmute you, and then we'll take a question. Hi, Isaac. Can you hear us? Isaac, I think you're live.
Okay. All right. All right. Good. Yes. I have two questions, please. Number one is on the CapEx. I saw that the CapEx for the first half is around RM 1.26 billion. So can you remind me what's the CapEx target for the whole year again? And going forward, is your target for this year? Is that something that we should expect, or it will be higher or lower moving into next year? That's question number one. How much is the CapEx for this year? Question number two is just I was looking at your announcement, and that's on page 17, PATAMI excluding impairments and goodwill is RM 500 million.
Can we just take this RM 500 million? I mean, is it like assuming there's no impairments or goodwill next few quarters? Is this a running number? Is that a recurring number? Or what am I missing here for this RM 500 million? Page 17. Thank you.
Okay. Firstly, on CapEx, for the first half of the year, CapEx was RM 644 million. So I'm not entirely sure why 1.26. So RM 644 million actually excludes XL CapEx. Yeah.
Yep. Sounds pretty low. So what should we expect for the full year and maybe the years forward?
So for our Group CapEx, basically the one that we gave guidance for in the beginning of the year was around RM 3 billion.
Yep. Okay. So it should catch up in the second half.
There will be some catch-up in the second half of the year, but yeah, we'll keep you posted in terms of at the next quarter, then you'll start to see a little bit of the element of the catch-up.
Yeah. All right.
However, with CapEx still phasing, yeah, Isaac, so while we gave the guidance earlier of about RM 3 billion, it was on the, for example, certain assumptions on when we expect Spectrum to be auctioned, etc. That one is completely out of our control. So it could be some phasing in there as well. Yeah.
Okay. Got it. Second question is on the RM 500 million page 17. So I was wondering how relevant is that? That's for one quarter or so.
What was that?
What should we expect? RM 500 million? Page 17.
Oh, of the Bursa announcement, is it? Page 17.
Yes, that's correct.
Yeah. Just give me a second. We'll come back to that. Yeah. Turn to page 17. Yeah. Bursa announcement. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. We'll move on to next. Yeah. I think we're back on this one. Louis, we'll come, sorry, Isaac, we'll come back to you. Are there any other questions? Yeah. Louis, you have one more?
Yes. Thanks. Yes. Yes. Thanks. I had one follow-up question on Dialog and Robi. Q o Q, the EBITDA margins improved. Is this like that the new normal, or is this because of currency? I saw that expenses and direct costs are down, so it seems to be recurring.
So this does not take into account currency. This is based on their organic operating, based on their own currency. So it's nothing to do with translation. So I think both of them are largely driven through the top-line improvement, also some of the cost-efficiency measures put in place here. Dialog is predominantly coming because of the synergies realized post the merger between Airtel and Dialog. And also, as I said, strong growth on the mobile side, which is a 33% year-on-year growth on the mobile. So it's a combination of top-line, better cost, and nothing to do with the currency movement.
Thanks, Vivek. Very clear.
Okay. Can we come back on that 500?
Hi, Isaac was just going to clarify on the 500 that you raised.
Sure. I think I can't figure out how you get a number, but that means that you probably included some of the gains on the XL side. But anyway, I will let you work out the number. Thank you.
Yeah. So maybe I can have to clarify. So the PAT of RM 535 million includes a gain from XL, which is classified under discontinued. That was RM 505 million, excluding the goodwill of impairment of RM 330 million relating to Link Net.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
Yeah.
I think the earlier numbers which we talked about was all on the continuing business.
Yeah.
So if you take discontinued, you get the benefit of the gain on disposal of XL.
XL.
You deconsolidate post-merger.
That's right.
Okay. We're not seeing we've got a bit more time. Is there a last question before we wrap up today? Okay. If there's no more questions, then thank you all for participating in today's briefing. If you do have any other follow-up questions or clarifications, please feel free to email us at ir@axiata.com, and we will get back to you. Thank you for your time.
Thank you. Thank you very much for joining this call.